WAITEMATA SEAT

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23352, 11 June 1941, Page 4

WAITEMATA SEAT

NOTIFICATION OF DEATH OF CAPTAIN LYON (F.0.P.R.) WELLINGTON, June 10. Notification of the death of Captain W. J. Lyon, the former member of the House of Representatives for Waitemata, together with a formal certificate of death, have been sent by the Re-gistrar-General to the Speaker of the House (the Hon. W. E. Barnard), thus disposing of an earlier suggestion made in Auckland that there might be difficulty in declaring the seat vacant solely on the report that Captain Lyon had been killed in action. The documents have now been received by Mr Barnard. Although no precedent arose from the Great War, Captain William Henry Dillon Bell was a member for Wellington Suburbs when he enlisted with the New Zealand forces; but he was not a member when he was killed in action at Passchendaele In July, 1917. A portrait of Captain Bell is on the walls of the main reading room in the general assembly library, bearing the inscription: “Captain William Henry Dillon Bell, M,P. for Wellington Suburbs, 1911-1913. The first New Zealand Member of Parliament to volunteer for active service in the Great War. Killed in action in France, July 31, 1917,” He was overseas when the General Election was held in December, 1914, and was not a candidate, Mr R. A. Wright succeeding him as the member for Wellington Suburbs.